Month: January 2017

Chairman of the Appointment Committee of Parliament has asked the Speaker of Parliament to grant him permission to sue the Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga to redeem his soiled image following the bribery scandal that has rocked the Legislature.

According to him, a claim by Hon. Ayariga that Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko attempted bribing members of the Appointments Committee with GHS3000 each was a “colossal untruth” smacking of “bad faith.”

Speaking on the floor of Parliament Tuesday, January 31, Hon. Osei Owusu who is also the 1st Deputy Speaker of Parliament said “Mr Speaker … I Joseph Osei-Owusu, MP for Bekwai, first Deputy Speaker and Chairman of the Appointments Committee have never discussed, requested, demanded nor received money of whatever quantum from Mr Boakye Agyarko for myself or committee members from Mr Boakye Agyarko or any other person for that matter. Neither have I discussed, offered or given any money to Hon Muntaka Mubarak for himself or for the members of the Minority on the Appointments Committee. The allegation by Hon Mahama Ayriga, therefore, is a colossal untruth which has done grievous damage to my reputation, my hard earned integrity as a lawyer of 27 years’ standing, a public servant of high repute, and a respected MP for Bekwai in the Ashanti Ashanti Region.”

He added that, “The Appointments Committee always takes a decision on every nominee who appears before it as soon as the day’s proceedings are over. Mr Speaker the decision on Mr Boakye Agyarko and Mr Yaw Osafo Marfo were taken the same night after they appeared before the committee – i.e. 20th and 23rd January, respectively. The decision was that the Minority will not support them and, therefore, they will be recommended to be approved by majority decision in the house.

“The charge of bribery to pass the nominee, therefore, does not fit into the equation as the nominee had already been recommended to be passed by the Majority the same night the nominee was vetted. Mr Speaker, recognisably the NPP has such a huge majority in parliament and as such does not need to pay a bribe to have its way in this house, that is, assuming bribery has been part of this business of this house.

“The need to have consensus is largely to benefit the Minority to the extent that their concerns may be taken into consideration in decision-making. To turn around to accuse the Majority of bribing the Minority, therefore, is illogical, ill-motivate and in bad faith

“Mr Speaker, I have a dilemma, my fervent heart desire is to go the civil court to reclaim my integrity. I’m, however, aware of the challenges one has to battle with in any litigation involving a sitting member of parliament but Mr Speaker, you have the power to permit service of court processes on a sitting member of parliament through your office, I crave your indulgence to assist me to ventilate my grievance in court, if I’m successful, it may help redeem the image of this parliament which is often battered by its own members.”

Odekro, a transparency organization with focus on proceedings in Ghana’s Parliament, has rendered an unqualified apology to the Deputy Majority Leader, Sarah Adwoa Safo errornously capturing her performance in the just ended Sixth Parliament.

The organization in its findings released on Tuesday, named the lawyer cum legislator among the 50 worst performing MPs of the Sixth Parliament.

However Odekro has issued a statement indicating that they were wrong in their earlier presentation.

“We want to acknowledge that we erred in the graphic representation of Madam Adwoa Safo’s performance in the Sixth Parliament as captured in our factsheet and thus, we render an unqualified apology to her. For the avoidance of doubt, Madam Adwoa Safo ranked 58th in the Sixth Parliament with a contribution score of 52.02/60 and attendance score of 24.13/40; totaling 76.15%.
Her scorecard was publicly available on our facebook page as at December 6, 2016.”

In Odekro’s report, the MP for Old Tafo, Anthony Akoto Osei was adjudged the overall best MP with a total score of 94.12%. James Klutse Avedzi 93.39%; Joseph Yieleh Chirech 92.21%; Papa Owusu-Ankomah 92.17%; and Alexander Afenyo-Markin 91.03% followed in that order.

The worst performer in the Sixth Parliament is Evans Paul Aidoo who scored 11.50%; Queenstar Pokua Sawyerr 16.98%; Dr. Nii Oakley Quaye-Kumah 17.09%; Ken Ohene Agyapong 18.29%; Dr. Mustapha Ahmed 18.60%

They are made up of 16 MPs of the National Democratic Congress (who were then the Majority) and three (3) MPs of the New Patriotic Party.

“We verified the completeness of our dataset by comparing our cache of data to a list of Parliament’s sitting days obtained from staff of the Parliamentary service. On each sitting day, three documents are produced namely, the Hansard, Order Paper and Votes and Proceedings. Consequently, for each date on Parliament’s calendar we have access to three primary documents.

“We verified the accuracy of this data set by confirming that each document bore the official seal of Parliament, followed the pattern of Parliament’s formatting and was marked as having been produced by the Table Office or the Hansard Office respectively. Odekro’s Content Manager and Research Assistant both verified each documentary source of our data,” Odekro said in a statement.

“We therefore assigned a weight of 40% of total score to attendance and 60% to the contribution score.

“Our rationale is simple. An MP’s presence in Parliament is practically of no effect if he or she does not contribute to deliberations in the house. MPs who are both present and contribute should therefore normally be ranked better than MPs who make regular appearances in Parliament but do not contribute to the work of the house.”

It said only 52 MPs or 18.9% of the 275 MPs contributed amendments to the over 81 bills which were approved by Parliament. Of the 79 Bills passed, 31 Bills or 43.3% were “tax bills”, introduced to impose or revise (mostly increase) taxes, customs duties and levies. The report further noted that 255 out of 275 (92.7%) of MPs made at least 1 contribution to debates during their 4-year tenure in office.

“73 MPs were absent without permission, a clear violation of article 97(1)(c) of the constitution. 28 MPs never absented themselves without permission.

“19 MPs did not make a single statement in 4 years in Parliament.

“NPP MPs made an average of 199 statements over the 4 year period; 33 statements more than NDC MPs (166 statements).”

The outspoken New Patriotic Party MP for Assin Central Ken Agyapong has been named among the 50 worst performing MPs of the Sixth Parliament.

His colleague lawmaker Sarah Adwoa Safo of Dome Kwabenya and the former Deputy Central Regional Minister Queenstar Pokua Sawyerr were also listed among the worst performers in a latest report released by a STAR-Ghana funded project.

The MP for Old Tafo, Anthony Akoto Osei was adjudged the overall best MP with a total score of 94.12%. James Klutse Avedzi 93.39%; Joseph Yieleh Chirech 92.21%; Papa Owusu-Ankomah 92.17%; and Alexander Afenyo-Markin 91.03% followed in that order.

The worst performer in the Sixth Parliament is Evans Paul Aidoo who scored 11.50%; Queenstar Pokua Sawyerr 16.98%; Dr. Nii Oakley Quaye-Kumah 17.09%; Ken Ohene Agyapong 18.29%; Dr. Mustapha Ahmed 18.60%

According to the report released by Odekro, a transparency organization with focus on proceedings in Ghana’s Parliament, 19 Members of Parliament never spoke on the floor throughout their four years in the lawmaking Chamber.

They are made up of 16 MPs of the National Democratic Congress (who were then the Majority) and three (3) MPs of the New Patriotic Party.

“We verified the completeness of our dataset by comparing our cache of data to a list of Parliament’s sitting days obtained from staff of the Parliamentary service. On each sitting day, three documents are produced namely, the Hansard, Order Paper and Votes and Proceedings. Consequently, for each date on Parliament’s calendar we have access to three primary documents.

“We verified the accuracy of this data set by confirming that each document bore the official seal of Parliament, followed the pattern of Parliament’s formatting and was marked as having been produced by the Table Office or the Hansard Office respectively. Odekro’s Content Manager and Research Assistant both verified each documentary source of our data,” Odekro said in a statement.

“We therefore assigned a weight of 40% of total score to attendance and 60% to the contribution score.
“Our rationale is simple. An MP’s presence in Parliament is practically of no effect if he or she does not contribute to deliberations in the house. MPs who are both present and contribute should therefore normally be ranked better than MPs who make regular appearances in Parliament but do not contribute to the work of the house.”

It said only 52 MPs or 18.9% of the 275 MPs contributed amendments to the over 81 bills which were approved by Parliament. Of the 79 Bills passed, 31 Bills or 43.3% were “tax bills”, introduced to impose or revise (mostly increase) taxes, customs duties and levies. The report further noted that 255 out of 275 (92.7%) of MPs made at least 1 contribution to debates during their 4-year tenure in office.

“73 MPs were absent without permission, a clear violation of article 97(1)(c) of the constitution. 28 MPs never absented themselves without permission.

“19 MPs did not make a single statement in 4 years in Parliament.

“NPP MPs made an average of 199 statements over the 4 year period; 33 statements more than NDC MPs (166 statements).”

Minister-designate for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, has made a strong case for a quota between career diplomats and political diplomats.

She is of the view that 60% of career diplomats should be retained by successive governments to continue to pursue the foreign policies of Ghana while the remaining 40% is reserved for politicians.

According to her, since career diplomats spend their entire life pursuing the foreign policies of Ghana, it is better to retain 60% of them in order to preserve the sector’s institutional memory.

“In my opinion, there should be 60% to 40% in favour of career diplomats,” she noted.

Madam Ayorkor Botchwey made this observation when she took her turn at the Appointments Committee of Parliament for vetting on Monday.

The issue of career diplomats being relegated to the background for political appointees has been a topical issue across the African continent.

While some are of the view that career diplomats be given the opportunity to continue their good works whenever there is a change of power, others share the belief that they should be changed since their political affiliations may not be known and as such could work against the successive government.

But Madam Ayorkor Botchwey appearing before the Appointments Committee thought otherwise.

She told the committee chaired by the 1st Deputy Speaker of Parliament, for purposes of continuity vis- a-vis institutional memory, it will be ideal to introduce a quota system where 60% of career diplomats will be retained.

Ghanamps.com

Minister-designate for the Interior and MP for Nandom Ambrose Dery, has said he will act speedily to push a response to the US government concerning efforts to curb the disturbing phenomenon of human trafficking.

“For the past two years Ghana has been rated as tier two. And if Ghana is rated as tier two, a third year running it would be downgraded to tier three resulting in consequences that will make this country lose financially at least 650 million dollars,” the nominee said during his vetting Saturday, January 21, 2017.

According to him, he’s already on the move holding stakeholder meetings to consummate the national efforts that will stimulate action in addressing the canker.

Ghana has been found not to be doing as much as the country should to curb the disturbing phenomena of human and Child trafficking.

This could lead to a downgrade and a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in US development aid assistance.

The 2016 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report which includes narratives for 188 countries and territories, including the United States, classifies Ghana as a Tier 2 Watch List country, meaning that the government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons and failed to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in the past year.

According to the US authorities, any country ranked on the Tier 2 Watch List for two consecutive years must be downgraded to Tier 3 in the third year unless it shows sufficient progress to warrant a Tier 2 or Tier 1 ranking.

Ghana has been on Tier 2 for two consecutive years and risk a downgrade to tier three if steps are not taken to tackle the problem.